The longest government shutdown in U.S history is finally over. Trump caved and won’t get his moronic wall, instead opting to sign the deal unanimously passed by Congress over a month ago. The same deal he said he’d sign until Fox News called him a coward.

For the first time I can truly see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Trump is broken. His power over Congress is gone. He’s facing real consequences for his behavior. His allies are fractured and fighting. The public isn’t listening when he speaks. His approval rating is plummeting. It’s the beginning of the end.

and TSA is like oh it had nothing absolutely nothing to do with the government shut down

and then fucking says this:

procedures weren’t followed, well huh it’s awfully funny that you’re understaffed and now procedures aren’t being followed TSA real interesting, if this truly had nothing to do with the shutdown then why is it only happening during the shutdown

guess I should have flown with my shampoo when the government was shut down being that they’re letting guns through now, a clearly less dangerous threat than hair washing liquid.

As the federal shutdown goes into its third week please be aware of what national park staff are going through. This comes from a NPS employee and applies to NPS staff:

1. We do NOT automatically get back pay. Congress has to pass
legislation approving it. There is a non-zero chance that we won’t get
paid at all.

2. If we apply for unemployment and then get back
pay, we have to pay that unemployment money back to the state, with very
few exceptions. We are not getting “double salary”.

3. We are
not “getting a vacation”. Since we cannot predict when the government
will reopen and we’re not bringing in a salary, most of us are sitting
around trying not to spend money on anything but the essentials,
anxiously awaiting word that we can return to our jobs. It is not
relaxing or fun.

4. We cannot legally do ANY work during the
shutdown unless we are excepted employees, and then we can only do
necessary duties. That means that I legally cannot communicate with
colleagues, write papers, conduct research that will protect lives and
property, distribute publications that the taxpayers paid me to write
about volcanic hazards, talk with the media about subjects in which I
have expertise, etc. Zero. Zip. Nada. My scientific career has basically
come to a grinding halt.

5. If we get another job during a
shutdown, the ethics rules we’re legally bound to follow mean that it
cannot be in anything related to the expertise for which we are
federally employed. That means other jobs we could qualify for in the
interim are likely going to be lower-paying and insufficient to cover
the expenses that we’ve normally planned for.

6. Federal contract
workers may never get paid for the time they cannot work during the
shutdown, since their employers are under zero obligation to give them
backpay. They are often the lowest-paid people in our workplaces to
begin with, and shutdowns hurt them immensely.

”I can’t believe he’s letting federal workers go without pay” the general public says of a man who allegedly never paid hundreds of his waiters, dishwashers, painters, and lawyers (the list goes on and on).

I’m shocked. Really. What a surprise. Never saw it coming. Who would have thought?

I wish you all would stop joking about the gov shutdown in the US because it’s not affecting the fascists and corrupted officials that would deserve to suffer. People working in federal offices like tax analysts may have to work weeks without getting paid. Many federal workers live paycheck to paycheck as it is.

Housing and Urban Development employees are barred from using any laptops, phones, iPads, etc. thatbwere provided to them through work.

People like me who are on EBT will be at risk of non-payment if the government runs out of their reserves for social services.

The government shut down because the democrats are more about people here illegally than its actual citizens. Let that sink in for a bit. They said fuck you to citizens because of those who didn't want to wait in line.

Look, you seem serious about this, so I want to have a serious conversation with you.

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a Bi-Partisan bill crafted by Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch and signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1997. It was originally passed as a ten-year program, set to expire in 2007.

In 2007 a bipartisan bill emerged from Congress, which was to both extend and expand SCHIP coverage. Two different versions of bipartisan expansion of SCHIP was vetoed by George W Bush. Finally, Bush signed a two-year extension of SCHIP at previous funding levels.

In 2009, yet another bipartisan expansion of SCHIP passed both chambers of Congress, this time changing the name to CHIP. Barack Obama was President, so it was signed into law, extending the program 8 years to place it back on the once a decade renewal process.

That Brings us to 2017. At every step of the way, both parties have either extended or expanded CHIP no matter who was in power. At this point though Republicans let the bill expire and since they have not brought a bill to the floor with CHIP included.

What has happened, is that the Republicans let CHIP expire, so that they could use it to try and extract an extension of the Continuing Resolution come shut down time from the Democrats.

Republicans took children’s lives and kept them in the balance so that they could get a political win. Literally, the GOP held American Children Hostage in this negotiation.